olaf
3301
Enjoyed the post Shockmesane. I could have really used that before I started playing Diablo 3, I have made some terrible Mystic choices on my characters and didnt pay attention to anything other sheet changes when comparing gear for probably my first hundred hours of play.
I have to say, though, that Kadala is a fucking cunt and I despise her and the mechanic. Bloodshards cap at 500 so I have never saved 2500 to spend on anything…I usually spend them 100 at a time but have occasionally saved them 500 at a time. I can honestly say that I have only ever gotten 1 item I wanted from her, that was M6 pants on my Demon Hunter and it was after…a lot of shards, more than 2500 for sure. Hilariously the very next orange/green drop I got in game was another set of Marauder pants. Since then I have given her thousands of shards looking for a Calamity and have gotten an orange/green maybe every 150 shards and always the same 3-4 crossbows. I really wish they would add an option to outright buy what you wanted with shards even if was 100x the regular slot expense.
Don’t blame me for Kadala! :D I’m an innocent bystander I swear she isn’t feeding me secret elite items no one else has access to… coughcough. I was just throwing a reasonable number out there. I feel like after 2500 for a 5 cost item you will get one on average of the random unique you are looking for. I’ve got them MUCH faster, but also slower sometimes. I’m probably working on 3000, 3500 to get a cindercoat right now. But I’ve got some of the set pieces I needed (more than one!) in an incredibly lucky 500 spending session. Not knowing the actual percentages or the secret rarity of items, even though I can hazard some guesses… I just feel like 2500ish is pretty fair for “most” items. There are the super-rare items like Wand of Woh and Rimeheart that you could literally spend 10’s of thousands trying to get and probably fail.
And while I’ve considered the option of being able to buy any piece of gear for even say, 10k shards, I think it would kind of be against what Diablo is about. I do think that Ramaldi’s gift should be purchasable for 500 shards, or even 1000 if they would increase the seemingly arbitrary cap.
Thongsy
3303
Item rarity/droptate was leaked a long while back. Kadala is annoying but some items are stupid rare and the Calamity is one of those that as DH you may never ever see along with Kridershot. But then I hate her too for never giving me the non-stupid rare Buriza.
You can also use http://www.diabloprogress.com/ and it will show you how much of a upgrade each % of a different stat etc will give you as benefit.
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Leave Kadala alone. A coworker of mine (who has absolutely catassed the shit out of the season) got his final piece of Firebird gear from her. Then again, he’s soloing T6 rifts for the 100 shards a pop they provide. Search on “=RIP= Predator”.
:0
I came down with something yesterday after playing Diablo most of the morning. Ended up having fever dreams about teleporting between levels and trying to do something with the gold. I was trying to, I don’t know, “balance” the gold somehow between different areas. Not sure if it was how much was dropped, or how much I collected, or if I was putting the gold back, or what. I’m starting to feel better this morning, but it might be a while before I’m comfortable going back to Diablo.
Bah. Lost my 70/52 HC Wiz on a bounty run at T1. I always hated the Caverns of Arachnea or whatever that spider den is called, and I ran into a pack of super-fast molten plagued etc. types. Stabbed my finger at the Q button at 1/3 health but too late. Teleport was down too. Ah well.
Luckily the Infernal Machine plans had dropped the run before, and were already on the blacksmith. Time to work on my season Wiz to replace him I guess.
This was my first T1 run in a while; I had got my paper doll DPS up above 600k finally and thought it was worth a try. It went well for the first three of the five bounty areas; this was number four. Meh.
I will never understand you HC masochists. Even if I was the best player with no error ever, lag would have killed me, 3X earlier today i had it in red, severside
Ephraim
3309
I had to finish a Greater Rift through red ping yesterday morning, and it was miserable. Between denial of service attacks on Blizzards servers, their own dubious IT competence, and my pretty crummy ISP, I will never play a hardcore character.
Now, my compliments to Meleketh. I can personally attest that he knows what he’s talking about, as I’ve been pairing with him regularly over the last week to do greater rifts. He’s single handedly allowed me to level my greater gems to 25, the critical point where the always-on abilities kick on, as even with a pretty decent Barb who can solo T6 relatively quickly, I just lack the DPS to get to the higher Greater Rifts solo. Listen to everything he says!
Finally, Kadala is evil. I’ve been rolling for a very specific non-set legendary drop that will perfect my Raekor’s build, the infamous new Vile Ward shoulders, with no luck in easily 5000 shards. Just mousing over her turns my stomach now. The Mystic is a beneficent, loving saint in comparison.
So, listen to what he says. But, I will add that there are some Barbarian specific tips that he doesn’t get into. One that occurs to me right off the bat is that for a belt you really want to get your hands on a Pride of Cassius, ideally with the full 6 second addition to Ignore Pain. It’s the only alternative to double-Unity (which only works soloing with your Follower, btw, so really isn’t a panacea), when you get your cooldown reduction to about 40%, you can pretty much maintain it constantly, and certainly when you need it for Elites.
You develop a thick skin :). It also makes leveling multiple characters more useful, as you are going to lose them eventually. You’re right, lag sometimes kills people, but for me at least (YMMV) the game would be sort of dry without the fear of losing a character. I mean, I like the general ARPG mechanics and loot slot machine bit, but I’m not an end-game min/maxer or build perfectionist, so HC gives me a simpler goal–stay alive!
I swear he isn’t on my payroll. But he is right, I left out a lot of class specific info. As I said, if you are unwillling to do 5-10 minutes of research you probably dont care enough to “win” at diablo. There are are a million class specific things that Tom isn’t paying me to talk about, and honestly you can solve yourself. I said something about how you are going to make awful choices. You will. Even when you have played 500 hours you will get bitter choices. All I can do is try to make you make an educated decision. I still look at my Magefists and hate being born. Thousands of shards later.
I have these equipped on my wizzie right this second, Shockmesane. I call them Meleketh’s Dream and I loooooove them ;-)
Very nice. I finally dropped my RoRG over the weekend - yay for scaling cache drop rates. Now I just need to find even one set Wizard item.
Well as of this weekend my S1 Wizard has surpassed my much longer played Barb in power. I had the Asheras recipe drop so I’m using 3/4 of that set and had a Tal’Rashas chest drop from Kadala. I’m still really far behind the ideal, but I was finally able to bump things up to T2 so I’m pretty happy with that lol.
jpinard
3315
Shockmesane - the elemental damage you posted in one of the armor ratings. Is that just because you’re a wizard or do you apply that to everyone?
Could you look at my character, http://us.battle.net/d3/en/profile/jpinard-1943/hero/51465534 and based on your thesis tell me what is wrong with it? Also, is “magic find” not worth it for the Helm’s gem socket? Btw I can just barely get through torment level 1 with this build.
Magic find is worthless, period. It used to be a critical stat, but now its value is multiplied by 0.1 for the only items that matter in the long term, sets and legendaries. Any other affix or gem will give you more useful results. If you want to boost your chances to find good items, kill faster on higher torment difficulties. More rolls = more chances, and the higher torment you play, the better your chances as well.
jpinard
3317
In shock’s big guide was he basically saying if armor doesn’t have 4 primary attributes you should sell it or salvage it ASAP? 3 generally isn’t good enough even if it has some decent secondaries?
MrGrumpy
3318
jpinard, I’m not Shock (not even close) but you’re missing a lot of crit hit chance and crit hit damage (CHC/CHD). Amulets (both), rings (both), bracers and helm are where you stack that. Shoulders, chest and pants are defense. Belts can go either way. Most importantly you need a socket on your weapon and stick the biggest green gem in there you can afford. Essentially a weapon without a socket isn’t worth using. You will start shedding toughness as your offense increases, but mobs can’t kill you if they’re dead :) (Once you establish those as your ‘baseline’, then you can start juggling CHC/CHD for elemental damage and elite damage.)
*
Regarding Kedela, I spent the entire weekend gambling on gloves for my wizard and got exactly one legendary for my efforts. One!
But lo and behold it was magefists with both CHD and CHC. Go figure. I also got a complete Tal Rasha set to drop - earning my first achievement for collecting a full set. That only took a hundreds of hours of game play!
Still I’m pretty happy with my mage’s progression. Enough loot drops to keep it interesting (and my stupid pack rat mentality is making my vault groan.) I succumbed to Shock’s public ridicule of me* using meteor shower and switched to molten impact. Yeah it’s more effective. But it’s not as fun! :( I did manage to solo Grift L24 in 11 minutes this a.m, which I thought was pretty good.
Until I see Dave did a L25 one in 7 minutes. 7 minutes! Color me impressed. :D
Oh, and has anyone tried making a Hellfire Amulet? I’m being drawn by the appeal of a free extra passive heh. (It’s random though so yeah it’ll probably suck … but it’s something else to do …)
*I’m blackluck in the clan.
LockerK
3319
Correct. Looking at your character, the first thing you want to do is get all your gear to level 70. As painful as it may be to drop set and legendary items, the jump from sub-70 to 70 gear is massive, even downgrading to rares.
This might be a stupid question, but is there a really short summary of:
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What from Shockmesane’s advice would be different on the console versions that don’t have the latest patch? I don’t know how extensive the changes were, so if it’s not a short answer, never mind, I can keep looking elsewhere.
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What, if any of this, is different for different classes? Or does the gear really all boil down to the same needs for everyone (other than obviously addressing whatever your primary class stats are). Or do people not even seriously play anything other than Wizards for endgame stuff?
I’m playing a monk on the PS4 version, hopefully I’ll hit 70 tonight, so I’m not yet in this whole other world of Diablo you guys live in. I kinda want to keep going with the monk, but I also kinda want to play all the classes eventually, so I don’t even know what my next step will be, but I just wanted to know that if I’m loosely adhering to the strategies here, am I going to make any major goofs?
